The religious right and the reshaping of sexual policy: An examination of reproductive rights and sexuality education

Does state-level context matter for individuals' knowledge about abortion, legality and health? Challenging the ‘red states v. blue states’ hypothesis

“…The promotion of inaccurate information about abortion has been identified in abstinence-only education (AOE) programmes (Ott and Santelli 2007) and Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) (Bryant and Levi 2012;Rosen 2012), both of which tend to exaggerate the health risks of abortion, specifically depression, breast cancer and infertility (Russo and Denious 2005;Kulczycki 2007;Mauro and Joffe 2007). 4 Of the 17 states requiring AOE programmes, just over half (53%) were 'red' states (Stanger-Hall, Hall, and Vitzthum 2011), while the majority of the 25 states that rejected federal funding for AOE were 'blue' states, as of 2009 (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States 2011).…”

The Mythology of Prostitution: Advocacy Research and Public Policy

“…Prescientific claims are especially apparent among ideologues and political actors, whose passionate commitment to a cause can undermine their objectivity, but prescientific reasoning also has been documented in some empirical research in various areas of knowledge production (Best 1999;Buchanan et al 2003;di Mauro and Joffe 2007;Epstein 2006). Such so-called knowledge can have profound policy implications.…”

“…The result is that prostitution policies are becoming increasingly divorced from sound research based on standard canons of scientific research. Prostitution policy is by no means unique in this regard; morality and dogma have also trumped science in recent policies on stem cells, HIV prevention, and needle-exchange programs (Buchanan et al 2003;di Mauro and Joffe 2007;Epstein 2006). In the case of prostitution, however, policy has changed dramatically and in a short span of time, as a direct result of the lobbying efforts of activists and scholars who have adopted the oppression paradigm (Weitzer 2007).…”

eHPE: a history of the future

“…School-based health interventions have met with a degree of success where access to young people has been the primary policy hurdle to be overcome, as in the case of immunisation programmes (Duffy, 1978). However, where interventionsboth curricular and extra-curricular-have sought to address complex behavioural matters such as alcohol and drug use, sexual behaviour, obesity and mental health, decades of research paint a far less encouraging picture (di Mauro & Joffe, 2007;Fletcher, Bonell, Sorhaindo, & Strange, 2009;Milgram, 1976). The reasons for this are varied but amongst the most regularly described in the literature are teachers' lack of specialist expertise, the uninspiring, short-term or coercive nature of interventions, parental and student resistance, the crowded school curriculum and the multifactorial nature of health behaviour (Adelman & Taylor, 2006;Thomas, 2006;Van Hook & Altman, 2012).…”